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Kosovo court finds five guilty in international organ trafficking ring

Toronto man was key witness in case against international organ trafficking network. Owner of clinic that performed illegal organ transplants, and his son, found guilty of human trafficking and organized crime.

Jonathan Ratel, a Canadian who pursued the case as the head of the European Union’s Special Prosecution Office in Kosovo told the Toronto Star he had hoped the trial would send an important message about “the black market trade in human organs that preys upon the poor and the indigent.”
(VISAR KRYEZIU / AP Photo)

A Canadian prosecutor in Kosovo who spent two years prosecuting an international organ trafficking network stretching from Toronto to the impoverished regions of Europe secured convictions Monday in a trial that heard chilling testimony about the black market trade in human body parts.

Jonathan Ratel, who pursued the case as the head of the European Union’s Special Prosecution Office in Kosovo, told the Star he hoped the guilty verdicts and stiff sentences would send a warning to “the medical practitioners, doctors and other professionals that may be tempted to engage in the obscene profits in the trade, purchase and procurement in human organs.”

The trial, which focused on a Pristina medical clinic that catered to what the judges called “wealthy older men” from Canada, the U.S., Israel, Germany and Poland, featured important testimony from a Toronto man who paid for a kidney transplant at the clinic.

A panel of three judges — two from the European Union, one from Kosovo — found the clinic owner and his son guilty of the most serious charges of human trafficking and organized crime.

They sentenced Lutfi Dervishi to eight years in prison and his son Arban Dervishi to seven years and three months for extracting kidneys from poor donors who were lured by financial promises.

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A third defendant was jailed for three years, and another two were sentenced to a single year for causing grievous bodily harm but released on parole.

Two former government officials also charged in the case were acquitted of fraud and abuse of authority.

The judges said they hoped the guilty verdicts “will be seen as a strong rebuke to those who engage in the trafficking of persons” and as a “vindication for those desperate victims who were illegally deprived of a vital organ.”

The judges — who heard from 100 witnesses and examined thousands of pages of records and evidence — ruled the donor victims who often came from poor regions of Eastern Europe “were successfully recruited as a result of their severe financial vulnerability” and made to sign “bogus documents” saying they were donating their kidneys for humanitarian purposes.

The Star first revealed in January 2012 that one of the people who received a kidney at the clinic was an ailing North York man named Raul Fain.

That March, in testimony via video link from Canada, Fain said he paid $105,000 for a transplant operation at the Pristina clinic in the summer of 2008. In May — almost four years after purchasing a kidney that came from a woman in Russia — Fain died.

Fain and the other organ recipients were not charged with any offences.

For Ratel, Monday’s verdict was a satisfying, if exhausting, end to several years of investigations and long, drawn-out court procedures that had him pursuing leads in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

“It was an extremely challenging, difficult investigation and prosecution and required all of my resources,” Ratel told the Star, acknowledging the personal toll it took on him.

“These victims — the indigent, the poor, the lost and the marginalized — have suffered grievous physical injury and psychological harm,” he said.

He is flying home this week to see his family in British Columbia and take “a significant period of leave.”

But Ratel said he hoped the trial would encourage countries such as Canada to draft legislation “that will make it a crime not only to engage in the black market trade in human organs in your home country, but more importantly that it is a crime to travel to other countries and engage in transplant tourism and pay for organs overseas.”

Buying organs is illegal in Canada, but no law here prevents citizens from purchasing body parts abroad.

Two foreign nationals — Dr. Yusuf Sonmez, the Turkish surgeon named as a key figure in the criminal enterprise, and Moshe Harel, an Israeli accused of being the financial organizer — remain at large, wanted under an Interpol “Red Notice.”

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